Printing & cropping

[Joe B]

Hi can anyone help with my printing and cropping problems ?, (I have watched the AF video's on printing & have imported ICC profiles for the paper) 

 

1. If i have to crop a photo, Im trying to crop to a custom ratio that fits a paper size. I cant find anywhere that lists or explains how to calculate all paper size ratio's ? 

2. If i set a custom ratio of 'absolute dimensions,' it alters and isn't constrained ? what should i do to constrain the ratio i want ?

3. Following the AF video to print, it says 'make a new "photo" document' ? shouldn't that be a 'new print' ? as the 'page' presets do not match an A3 size (17"x11") ?, therefore when i come to print an A3 its always under size as an A3 is 11.69" x 16.54"

4. Should i be 're-sizing the document to the paper size that i want to print on ?

5. Should my colour be RGB8 or RGB16 ?

6, Should I use AF to print or use my printer software to print ?

7 Where in AF can I find a tool to place my photo in the center of the paper to print  ?

Thanks

Edited January 31, 2018 by Joe B
q 6 & 7 is related to AF printing

[v_kyr]

1. Look on the internet there are sites which list and offer calculators for common paper size ratios...

• Dimensions Of A Series Paper Sizes

• DIN Formate

2. Try to change under the crop toolbar the settings to "Own defined aspect ratio" and apply the field values you need for the crop.

3. Not sure what you mean here, since an A3 paper size is 11.7 x 16.5 inch and for printing you would have to apply the DPI, your wanted printer supported resolution (>= 300 DPI)

4. Yes that makes always sense, the document size should match the wanted physical paper size. E.g. size and resolution for printing should be setup accordingly.

5. It depends on how much color/grayscale accuracy you need here and if just 8-bit per channel would maybe leed to posterization under certain conditions (B/W gradients etc.) in contrast to 16-bit per channel here. Usually the higher the more colors and more accuracy for higher screen resolution output. For printing the RGB color space will be anyway mapped to CYMK since that's what printers use and here the bigger screen color space might also lead to slightly better printer color results (depending on printer drivers and profiles used etc.).

6. You have to try what gives you best looking and the most accurate and pleasing output results here.

7. Usually if you drag a photo inside AF into a document it is as default placed centered, though you can also use the allignment settings, grid handles etc. to adjust here.

[Granddaddy]

I have never understood why an image file should be cropped to some particular dimension for printing later. Any image I make might later be printed at a variety of dimensions with a variety of crops on a variety of paper sizes for a variety of purposes. And I'm just an amateur with simple needs.

A better work model is for the print program to crop the image and fit it to the desired size and position at print time. I have been using Qimage to do just that for many years. Unless Affinity Photo duplicates that functionality I will never be printing from Affinity Photo.

Perhaps Affinity could develop a partnership with the Qimage developer to put that kind of power into Affinity Photo. Just last month, another company announced Qimage One as a kind of clone of Qimage that works on the Mac. Obviously the Qimage developer is willing to work with others.

I switched from Photoshop Elements to Affinity Photo just a couple of months ago because AP has a superior model for editing and retouching images. I use Qimage because it has a superior model for printing images. I'd love to see AP and QI-U combined.

AT $69.99, Qimage Ultimate might seem pricey compared to AP, but it does far more than prepare images for printing.

http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/

http://www.binartem.com/qimageone/

Disclaimer: I have no connection with either of these companies. I'm just an old granddaddy who loves making printed images for my descendants and friends.

 

 

[v_kyr]

Well Qimage is a special one in this regard for printing on Win with pretty good and useful features, especially also related to various color management profile handling etc. I've used that a lot together with Profile Prism and color targets in the past on Win, in order to build more accurate custom own printer and scanner ICC profiles.

[Joe B]

Thanks guys, with ref to my Q3 When printing, AF suggests you create a ‘New document’ to paste your photo  into (to give you more control) but shouldn’t it be a ‘new print’ not ‘new photo’ as the page preset doesn’t list (for example) an A3 size print size. So when I print an A3, its undersize and not A3 ie it shows a 17” x 11” page pre-set but an A3 is 11.69” x 16.53” (if you look under ‘new print’ it lists all the paper sizes).

On the printer menu page set-up - Should I be using ; Normal size, borderless,  fit to page or scaled on my canon printer ?

Should my print type be; Scale, fit-to-printable or shrink-to-printable ?

Should my layout be defined by driver or paper size ?